EDUC251

I'm currently crashing this conference. Shhhhh! Hopefully I'll learn lots of things to share.

"Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print."

This is my review of the plagiarism checker, Dupli Checker

This is my post for the assignment to map learning objectives to specific "evidence of understanding"

Based on an article in Time Magazine

Shouldn't we be making it worth it?

I haven't watched the entire thing yet. This was shared on the EDUCAUSE CIO listserv and many people are thanking the person who shared it. The title sounded like something that would be appropriate for out class, and understanding the challenges faced by eLearning and eLearners and balancing participation.

Nigel is very funny! He has the subtle British sense of humor even though he might be Austrialian. Anyway, he stated wearing jeans on Friday doesn't mean anything really. You are still under pressure; still working; and the only thing changed is your clothes. Incidentally, a study...I no longer remember where to find it...states when people where jeans and casual wear they are more productive. That is the bottom line...Productivity. It drives business today and relaxing and striking a work-life balance can be almost impossible in American "sweat shops: which is what industry in the U.S. seems to be metamorphosing into.

This well written article gives pointers to teachers on how to discourage plagiarism in their classes as well as how to teach students about plagiarism in a positive light before it occurs. Very helpful!

I think this Virtual Salt article does a good job outlining the reasons why students plagiarize. While poor time management and procrastination are major factors, I also think that students are afraid of looking stupid by using their own writing styles - especially with international students. My policy regarding plagiarism now is to "fire a shot across the bow - to make sure that a student understands how serious un-cited work or ideas can be. What follows is an example of an evaluation that I wrote for what I consider to be very good student, who should've known better. It was simple to discover the plagiarized material by putting a suspected plagiarized phrase in quotes and pasting into a Google search box. That approach works very well in my experience. *********** Evaluation note to a student who plagiarized content **************** Your assignment was copied and pasted directly from an online essay called "The Impact of the Information Revolution", written by Kerby Anderson at the following URL: a href="http://www.lifeway.com/" This is plagiarism. I can't emphasize how serious this is. Repeat occurrences can get you kicked out of school and can have a long term impact on your academic record. It also represents a careless and irresponsible attitude towards your work at Bellevue College. On a personal level, I'm also surprised and disappointed, since you've been a good student up to this point in the class. Since this is a 100 level communications class, I'm giving you zero points for this project. If it happens again, I'll fail you from this course, and will also notify the office of the Dean of Student Services, to let them know that there were instances of plagiarism on your part. If you feel that this action is unfair or unreasonable, you may contact XXXXX, Chair of the Communications Department at xxxxx@bellevuecollege.edu.

I found both comments and the presentation an interesting read. Maybe students plagiarize because of the pressures inside the system of education and in the business world. I have never felt the need; but I have felt the need to get good grades. I use to spend three days studying before finals and sometimes without sleep (no drugs) and then crash for 24 hours...sleeping. I did more than most students and worked hard to stay on the Dean's list. By the time I entered my doctoral program it was so cocmpetitive, I started rethinking the reason I had for being there. It was not a pleasant expereience. You had to be a 3.65 or higher just to get into the program and then write a reseach paper and defend it before a committee of three to just get in the door.

I read the assignment about assessment and suddenly thought...this is really crap! I dislike the whole concept of grades. In fact, this video shows that if you really want to assess assessment...what you need to do is teach the most difficult class and find a way to help all students learn it. Learning is a process. I think you cannot learn as much without the help or couching of an instructor or professor. If they show you what concepts they want you to learn...every step along the way, through course design and asking questions to stimulate thought, learners will learn even the most difficult concepts and apply them.. Feedback is essential. Not just feedback; but feedback that helps the learner build on what they already know and move forward. Interactive learning with others continues the process and helps give the learner even more ways to continue the learning process.

One of the biggest sea-changes I've seen in my own teaching experience at Bellevue College since the 1990's is a greater shift towards student-centered learning. One of the major indicators to me of this change was the "Affirmation of Inclusion" initiative that states as an up front policy that Bellevue College is committed to treat all students with respect and support no matter of their ethnic background, age, disability, gender, etc. This policy is visibly posted in every classroom. The older standard educational model based on what Rick Stiggins calls "producing dependable rank order", ie.. consisting of winners and losers - is giving way to a educational approach with lifetime learning as a foundation. We are all on a continuous learning path during the entire arc of our lives, and can potentially all help each other wherever we are on the curve. Rather than specialized pidgeon holes, we are more aptly described by Buckminster Fuller's book title in the 1960's - I seem to be a verb...

I dislike being graded! Yet the grade factor has given me a reason to dig deeply into any studies I take. I wanted to be in charge of my learning and assess myself...unfortunately, I set standards far higher than any instructor would.

I thought you might like to review this, based on our topic this past week. I don't think this document gets as much attention as it should. I like that this is posted as a "right" - "Students shall be protected from academic evaluation which is arbitrary, prejudiced or capricious, but are responsible for meeting the standards of academic performance established by each of their instructors."

I send students to the Omsbud office quite often when they are in a dispute with grading and their instructor...just thought it was worth mentioning.

A British video on formative assessment. An interesting concept.

I found this a interesting study of assessment.

This is the Module #4 post with overarching understandings.

I took a look at it and it seems maybe your post was cut off? I like the understanding I see there. I also like that you mentioned the just-in-time issue. I've found many times I've planned workshops only to discover the learners really needed something different, and I've had to switch gears.

I found this site while researching this week's topics. I explored the site and watched the demo video, however, I could not find out how much this application costs. I do see how this could be a great tool to use for research papers, essays, all written assignments.

I saw a quote to a university that was over 50K.

We have several secondary schools using it and they like it very much. It is a subscription cost per school but as thePO doesn't come through my office I am not sure how much it is. It probably varies by size of school.

This is a screencast I made last year about how we used wikispaces for our courses. This is the type of recording I'd like to see you do for your final projects. I created this using the free trial version of Camtasia.

Sorry all - I am serioiusly and sadly behind in class. This is the self check from Module 4.

I liked the question - rate new thinking or idea prompted by ... It enabled "critical thinking" for me, as I had to reflect on not just the information, but the concepts from the lesson.

A blog summarizing updates to my course framework on how the course would be assessed.

This is the activity for Module 5. I really like this open learning system. If you go to my blog you will find that they ( Canvas) will work with you whether you buy their system or not. Please watch video #2 on my blog. (Note: I wrote the last two paragraphs on my blog here. Then I cut and pasted it to my blog because it took up too much space on Diigo.)

Free is never really free, but it's a good way to learn about how these systems work. I'm currently investigating it for a project, and should find out actually licensing costs soon. I've got some quotes on other systems and it just blows my mind how much we pay for this stuff.

Thanks for posting those two videos on your blog -- informative. I am in the process of looking at LMS to use at my workplace...thought Moodle looked good. I will now do a thorough review of Canvas. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.